-->

Important

Welcome to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, the new name for Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection. Read more about this and other updates here. We'll be updating names in products and in the docs in the near future.

While Mac-specific vulnerabilities and threats don’t make news headlines as often as other devices, they’re certainly not immune to attacks. That’s why it’s important to equip your Mac with antivirus that stays on top of emerging viruses and malware and why we.

This topic describes how to install, configure, update, and use Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac.

Caution

Running other third-party endpoint protection products alongside Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac is likely to lead to performance problems and unpredictable side effects. If non-Microsoft endpoint protection is an absolute requirement in your environment, you can still safely take advantage of MDATP for Mac EDR functionality after configuring MDATP for Mac antivirus functionality to run in Passive mode.

What’s new in the latest release

Tip

If you have any feedback that you would like to share, submit it by opening Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac on your device and navigating to Help > Send feedback.

To get the latest features, including preview capabilities (such as endpoint detection and response for your Mac devices), configure your macOS device running Microsoft Defender ATP to be an 'Insider' device. See Enable Microsoft Defender ATP Insider Device.

How to install Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac

Prerequisites

• A Microsoft Defender ATP subscription and access to the Microsoft Defender Security Center portal
• Beginner-level experience in macOS and BASH scripting
• Administrative privileges on the device (in case of manual deployment)

Installation instructions

There are several methods and deployment tools that you can use to install and configure Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac.

Best Free Mac Virus Removal

• Third-party management tools:

• Command-line tool:

System requirements

The three most recent major releases of macOS are supported.

• 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14 (Mojave), 10.13 (High Sierra)
• Disk space: 1GB

Beta versions of macOS are not supported. macOS Sierra (10.12) support ended on January 1, 2020.

After you've enabled the service, you may need to configure your network or firewall to allow outbound connections between it and your endpoints.

Licensing requirements

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection for Mac requires one of the following Microsoft Volume Licensing offers:

• Microsoft 365 E5 (M365 E5)
• Microsoft 365 E5 Security
• Microsoft 365 A5 (M365 A5)

Note

Eligible licensed users may use Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection on up to five concurrent devices.Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection is also available for purchase from a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). When purchased via a CSP, it does not require Microsoft Volume Licensing offers listed.

Network connections

The following downloadable spreadsheet lists the services and their associated URLs that your network must be able to connect to. You should ensure that there are no firewall or network filtering rules that would deny access to these URLs, or you may need to create an allow rule specifically for them.

Item	Description
Spreadsheet	The spreadsheet provides specific DNS records for service locations, geographic locations, and OS.

Microsoft Defender ATP can discover a proxy server by using the following discovery methods:

• Proxy autoconfig (PAC)
• Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol (WPAD)
• Manual static proxy configuration

If a proxy or firewall is blocking anonymous traffic, make sure that anonymous traffic is permitted in the previously listed URLs.

Warning

Authenticated proxies are not supported. Ensure that only PAC, WPAD, or a static proxy is being used.

SSL inspection and intercepting proxies are also not supported for security reasons. Configure an exception for SSL inspection and your proxy server to directly pass through data from Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac to the relevant URLs without interception. Adding your interception certificate to the global store will not allow for interception.

To test that a connection is not blocked, open https://x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/api/report and https://cdn.x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/ping in a browser.

If you prefer the command line, you can also check the connection by running the following command in Terminal:

The output from this command should be similar to the following:

OK https://x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/api/report

OK https://cdn.x.cp.wd.microsoft.com/ping

Caution

We recommend that you keep System Integrity Protection (SIP) enabled on client devices. SIP is a built-in macOS security feature that prevents low-level tampering with the OS, and is enabled by default.

Once Microsoft Defender ATP is installed, connectivity can be validated by running the following command in Terminal:

How to update Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac

Microsoft regularly publishes software updates to improve performance, security, and to deliver new features. To update Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac, a program named Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) is used. To learn more, see Deploy updates for Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac

How to configure Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac

Guidance for how to configure the product in enterprise environments is available in Set preferences for Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac.

macOS kernel and system extensions

In alignment with macOS evolution, we are preparing a Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac update that leverages system extensions instead of kernel extensions. Visit What's new in Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection for Mac for relevant details.

Resources

• For more information about logging, uninstalling, or other topics, see the Resources page.

Anti Malware Testfile

Additional notes:

1. This file used to be named ducklin.htm or ducklin-html.htm or similar based on its original author Paul Ducklin and was made in cooperation with CARO.
2. The definition of the file has been refined 1 May 2003 by Eddy Willems in cooperation with all vendors.
3. The content of this documentation (title-only) was adapted 1 September 2006 to add verification of the activity of anti-malware or anti-spyware products. It was decided not to change the file itself for backward-compatibility reasons.

Who needs the Anti-Malware Testfile

(read the complete text, it contains important information)
Version of 7 September 2006

If you are active in the anti-virus research field, then you will regularly receive requests for virus samples. Some requests are easy to deal with: they come from fellow-researchers whom you know well, and whom you trust. Using strong encryption, you can send them what they have asked for by almost any medium (including across the Internet) without any real risk.

Other requests come from people you have never heard from before. There are relatively few laws (though some countries do have them) preventing the secure exchange of viruses between consenting individuals, though it is clearly irresponsible for you simply to make viruses available to anyone who asks. Your best response to a request from an unknown person is simply to decline politely.

A third set of requests come from exactly the people you might think would be least likely to want viruses „users of anti-virus software“. They want some way of checking that they have deployed their software correctly, or of deliberately generating a „virus incident in order to test their corporate procedures, or of showing others in the organisation what they would see if they were hit by a virus“.

Reasons for testing anti-virus software

Obviously, there is considerable intellectual justification for testing anti-virus software against real viruses. If you are an anti-virus vendor, then you do this (or should do it!) before every release of your product, in order to ensure that it really works. However, you do not (or should not!) perform your tests in a „real“ environment. You use (or should use!) a secure, controlled and independent laboratory environment within which your virus collection is maintained.

Using real viruses for testing in the real world is rather like setting fire to the dustbin in your office to see whether the smoke detector is working. Such a test will give meaningful results, but with unappealing, unacceptable risks.

Since it is unacceptable for you to send out real viruses for test or demonstration purposes, you need a file that can safely be passed around and which is obviously non-viral, but which your anti-virus software will react to as if it were a virus.

If your test file is a program, then it should also produce sensible results if it is executed. Also, because you probably want to avoid shipping a pseudo-viral file along with your anti-virus product, your test file should be short and simple, so that your customers can easily create copies of it for themselves.

The good news is that such a test file already exists. A number of anti-virus researchers have already worked together to produce a file that their (and many other) products „detect“ as if it were a virus.

Agreeing on one file for such purposes simplifies matters for users: in the past, most vendors had their own pseudo-viral test files which their product would react to, but which other products would ignore.

The Anti-Malware Testfile

This test file has been provided to EICAR for distribution as the „EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File“, and it satisfies all the criteria listed above. It is safe to pass around, because it is not a virus, and does not include any fragments of viral code. Most products react to it as if it were a virus (though they typically report it with an obvious name, such as „EICAR-AV-Test“).

The file is a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run (it prints the message „EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!“).

It is also short and simple – in fact, it consists entirely of printable ASCII characters, so that it can easily be created with a regular text editor. Any anti-virus product that supports the EICAR test file should detect it in any file providing that the file starts with the following 68 characters, and is exactly 68 bytes long:

X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not exceeding 128 characters. The only whitespace characters allowed are the space character, tab, LF, CR, CTRL-Z. To keep things simple the file uses only upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks, and does not include spaces. The only thing to watch out for when typing in the test file is that the third character is the capital letter „O“, not the digit zero.

You are encouraged to make use of the EICAR test file. If you are aware of people who are looking for real viruses „for test purposes“, bring the test file to their attention. If you are aware of people who are discussing the possibility of an industry-standard test file, tell them about www.eicar.org, and point them at this article.

In order to facilitate various scenarios, we provide 4 files for download. The first, eicar.com, contains the ASCII string as described above. The second file, eicar.com.txt, is a copy of this file with a different filename. Some readers reported problems when downloading the first file, which can be circumvented when using the second version. Just download and rename the file to „eicar.com“. That will do the trick. The third version contains the test file inside a zip archive. A good anti-virus scanner will spot a ‚virus‘ inside an archive. The last version is a zip archive containing the third file. This file can be used to see whether the virus scanner checks archives more than only one level deep.

Once downloaded run your AV scanner. It should detect at least the file „eicar.com“. Good scanners will detect the ‚virus‘ in the single zip archive and may be even in the double zip archive. Once detected the scanner might not allow you any access to the file(s) anymore. You might not even be allowed by the scanner to delete these files. This is caused by the scanner which puts the file into quarantaine. The test file will be treated just like any other real virus infected file. Read the user’s manual of your AV scanner what to do or contact the vendor/manufacturer of your AV scanner.

IMPORTANT NOTE
EICAR cannot be held responsible when these files or your AV scanner in combination with these files cause any damage to your computer. YOU DOWNLOAD THESE FILES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Download these files only if you are sufficiently secure in the usage of your AV scanner. EICAR cannot and will not provide any help to remove these files from your computer. Please contact the manufacturer/vendor of your AV scanner to seek such help.

Download area using the standard protocol HTTP
– Sorry, HTTP downoad ist temporarily not provided. –
Download area using the secure, SSL enabled protocol HTTPS
eicar.com 68 Bytes	eicar.com.txt 68 Bytes	eicar_com.zip 184 Bytes	eicarcom2.zip 308 Bytes

Mac Os Virus

How to delete the test file from your PC

We understand (from the many emails we receive) that it might be difficult for you to delete the test file from your PC. After all, your scanner believes it is a virus infected file and does not allow you to access it anymore. At this point we must refer to our standard answer concerning support for the test file. We are sorry to tell you that EICAR cannot and will not provide AV scanner specific support. The best source to get such information from is the vendor of the tool which you purchased.

Mac Virus Scanner

Please contact the support people of your vendor. They have the required expertise to help you in the usage of the tool. Needless to say that you should have read the user’s manual first before contacting them.